Activists go thru 5 stages of grief for the climate change campaign

Summary: Climate activists have begun to see the failure of their campaign to get public policy measures to fight climate change. Their actions follow the five stages of grief in the Kübler-Ross model. This helps us predict what comes next, and prepare. For example, stage four (bargaining) offers an opportunity to gain something from the expensive policy gridlock in this vital area. This is the third in a series attempting to understand the ending of this 26-year-story and find in it some useful lessons for the future.

“The time for debate has ended.”
— True words by Marcia McNutt (editor-in-Chief of Science, next President of the NAS) in “The beyond-two-degree inferno“, editorial in Science, 3 July 2015.

The 5 stages of grief in the Kübler-Ross model

The final chapters appear to have come in the great campaign to enact public policy measures against climate change. Twenty-six years have passed since James Hansen’s Senate testimony and ten since Al Gore’s speech (predicting a “time of consequences” with, among other things, more Katrinas). Despite support from the Left, academia, journalists, and the major science institutions — yet after 20 years they had achieved only minor support from most developed nations and almost nothing from the emerging world.

Climate activists hoped for a boost from either a large weather event or President Obama. Obama did little until this year he then made only a small step with his Clean Power Plan (phasing out coal, but not addressing oil or natural gas). Activists attempted to blame CO2 for several large weather events, but were often frustrated by denials from the major climate agencies (e.g., NOAA about the 2012 Central Plains Drought and the California drought).

By 2015 climate change was moving off the center stage, as it consistently ranked near the bottom of the US public’s major policy concerns. Newspapers reassigned staff to hotter stories (the LAT in 2008, the NYT in 2013). Presidential candidates of both parties muted their climate change policies. The COP21 festival seems likely to produce few results (just like its predecessors).

The death of a large joint effort creates grief, best described (impressionistically) by the five stages of the Kübler-Ross model. This fits the recent actions of climate activists. First there is…

(1) Denial

Activists’ initial reaction was (ironically) denial. They believed that the public supported them, that action was prevented only by shadowy conspiracies and unethical journalists (who reported both sides of the debate), and that strong policy action would happen soon. For decades they hoped that action will come after a disastrous weather event (to be blamed on climate change), the next conference, the next IPCC report, or the next media event.

(2) Anger

For some activists, denial has boiled over into anger. Most notably, James Hansen — who wrote a scathing essay overflowing with anger. Obama would not even meet with him, James Hansen — a star of the CAGW movement! Worse…

“Obama is not proposing the action required for the essential change in energy policy direction” {decarbonization} … How can such miserable failure of political leadership be explained, when Obama genuinely wants climate policy to be one of his legacy issues? … Get ready for the great deceit and hypocrisy planned for December in Paris.

… I have suggested, asked, or begged lawmakers, in more nations and states than I can remember, to consider a simple, honest, rising carbon fee with all funds distributed to legal residents. Instead, invariably, if they are of a bent to even consider the climate issue, they propose the discredited ineffectual cap-and-trade-with-offsets (C&T) with all its political levers.”

Also see “Why the Paris climate deal is meaningless” by Oren Cass (Manhattan Institute) at Politico (a useful weather vane for opinion-makers’ trends). “The more seriously you take the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, the angrier you should be.”

Anger feels good but accomplishes nothing. The next stage offers hope…

(3) Bargaining

The Bargaining stage might prove fruitful, when activists see the clock running out (especially when funding begins to dry up) and change their tactics from mockery and insults (“Deniers!”) to bargaining. Both Left and Right can find common cause about many public policy measures to prepare for climate change — which both sides agree is inevitable (although in different contexts). Many such measures will require large-scale infrastructure projects, often popular in Congress.

The US public policy gridlock might break during this stage, although achieving on fragments of activists’ goals. See more details here. But the grand hopes for massive policy action will likely remain unfulfilled, especially for those using the threat of CAGW to change our economic and political systems (e.g., Naomi Klein and Pope Francis).

But if bargaining fails (it can produce partial policy success, unlike with death), eventually most activists will come to…

“Despair” by Edvard Munch (1894).

(4) Depression

People move through these stages at their own pace, often skipping one or more. Some climate scientists have moved into depression, and understandable reaction to the failure of the policy campaign to produce the measures they consider necessary for the survival of humanity — and, in many cases, to which they have devoted so much effort for so long.

Activists will enjoy the certainty that they were correct even though defeated by an ignorant public led by conservatives and oil companies. They will look forward — as did previous generations of such prophets — to the eventual apocalypse that results from the world’s refusal to believe.

Eventually the weather will decide whose science was stronger, that of the “activists or the “skeptics”. It might take years to see decisive results, or perhaps decades (see some scientists’ predictions here). Climate change is a commonplace in history, sometimes destroying entire civilizations. Our refusal to prepare even for the obvious — continuation of the two centuries of warming or, even more irresponsibly, for repeat of past extreme weather — probably will prove expensive in lives and money.

The first half of 2016 has seen temperatures breaking 2015’s record breaking temps. Some scientists are predicting no Arctic sea ice by the end of this summer. If one goes back to 1880, we have already warmed 1.5 degrees C as they continue to say we must not go over 2.
And still no one in power is really listening.
West Virginia is drowning, India is burning up at 130 degrees, and Alaska is ten degrees warmer than all previous records.
I think looking at grief is quite appropriate, as I believe we are facing human extinction. We are ALL going to finally have to come to acceptance of that. Not pretty.

I appreciate your attention to the daily news and it’s “if it bleeds, it leads” alamism. I suggest instead reading the IPCC’s cogent and clear summary of scientists’ work, and paying less attention to whatever alarmists that clickbait-hungry journalists feature.

Another example is the 2014-15 hysteria about the “super” “monster” “Godzilla” El Ninos that would wreck havoc. Instead it ran much as NOAA predicted, roughly similar to the three other strongest El Nino events of the past quarter-century. Not remotely a “hundred year event”, like the hundred year floods insurance companies use for ratings.

The world has been warming for 2 centuries as it rebounds from the Little Ice Age; with only the post-WWII warming caused by us. We have no direct records of warmth in previous cycles (just proxy data of uncertain reliability), so “record highs” are in fact usually “records of the past 50 or 100” years. A dot in a world with 30 and 60 year long weather/climate cycles.

“I think looking at grief is quite appropriate, as I believe we are facing human extinction”

The science was right in the early 70’s, Global Cooling. If you look at the climate history for the last 15,000 years, or even the last million, you will see we are due to cool, with short warming trends for about the next 30,000 years. Science is fun. I am certain you can find the historic charts showing long term natural weather patterns

If you look at the reports of the IPCC, you’ll learn that climate scientists are well aware of that history. Why would you believe that they are not?

As for belief in the 1970s of global cooling, it’s wildly exaggerated. There were some scientists who believed that the world was cooling — largely due to anthropogenic emmissons of aerosols. Most scientists were uncertain which would prove the dominate forcing, aerosols or CO2. That was decided by the 1960s and 1970s clean air regulations in Japan, Europe, and America. For documentation see